The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration has announced that seven aerial photo and video production companies have asked for regulatory exemptions that would allow the film and television industry to use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) with FAA approval for the first time.
Category Archives: VTOL
Las Vegas Club Delivers Champagne by OctoCopter
Bottle service took to the sky Memorial Weekend as Marquee Dayclub at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas debuted a new high roller delivery method: OctoCopter. Continue reading
Luxury Hotel Delivers Champagne by QuadCopter
A luxury hotel is taking Champagne delivery to a whole new level with a soaring bottle service by quadcopter.The Mansion at Casa Madrona in California unleashed their state-of-the-art octo-copter earlier this month to deliver the residents precious bubbly. The service is specifically for guests staying in the hotel’s most luxurious suite – where nights start at $10,000. Continue reading
Skycatch Raises $3M from Investors Including Google for UAS for Energy Industry
The egg white UAS lifted off from its ground station at a hospital construction site here, hovered for an instant, then zoomed off, sounding like a five-pound bee as it buzzed around the cranes towering over the six-acre project. Capable of carrying a high-resolution camera and other sensors, the quadcopter, a helicopter with four rotors that resembles a spaceship from a 1950s science fiction movie, was flying in a demonstration of its ability to serve a potentially lucrative new market for UAS: the energy industry. Continue reading
UAS Mapping Trees in Finland
Mapping the trees in Finland’s forests sounds like a Herculean task – there are 30 billion of them, making it Europe’s most densely wooded nation. But for one start-up that’s just the warm-up act to its plan to use laser-equipped drones to shake up industry at large. From package deliveries to nuclear power plant examinations, the Helsinki-based Sharper Shape can see limitless possibilities for its system. Continue reading
Japanese Dance Company Choreographs Performance with QuadCopters
Today, in “Drone-Augmented Amazingness,” Japanese dance troupe Eleven Play have teamed up with artist, hacker, and all-around iconoclast Daito Manabe to create a performance that brings the term, “rise of the machines” to literal new heights. Continue reading
Saint John Paul II Relic Procession in Washington Filmed by QuadCopter
The procession had an ancient vibe: Dozens of priests in white robes, leading hundreds more Catholics in a solemn procession through Northeast Washington. People chanted and sang prayers from the 3rd century, asking saints through Christianity’s history for help. The Archdiocese of Washington debuted its new, hubcap-sized flying device on Mother’s Day, using it to videotape crowds participating in a procession marking the canonizations of popes John Paul II and John the 23rd (now called St. John Paul II and St. John the 23rd). Continue reading
Quadrotor uses Google’s Project Tango for Autonomous Flight
Early this year, Google unveiled its Project Tango smartphone, a mobile device equipped with a depth sensor, a motion tracking camera, and two vision processors that let the phone track its position in space and create 3D maps in real time. The device is particularly useful for robots, which have to navigate and locate themselves in the world. Continue reading